MEMORANDUM BY. THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS "OF VENEZUELA. , RELATIVE TO THE NOTE OF LORD SALISBURY TO MR. OLNEY, DATED NOVEMBER 26, 1895, ON THE QUESTION OF BOUNDARY BETWEEN VENEZUELA AND BRITISH GUAYANA. ATLANTA, GEORGIA: Franklin Printing and Publishing Company, Geo. W. Harrison, State Printer. 1896. MEMORANDUM BY THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF VENEZUELA. RELATIVE TO THE NOTE OF LORD SALISBURY TO MR. OLNEY, DATED NOVEMBER 26, 189s, ON THE QUESTION OF BOUNDARY BETWEEN VENEZUELA AND BRITISH GUAYANA. ATLANTA, GEORGIA: Franklin Printing and Publishing Company. Geo. W. Harbison, State Printer. 1896. [Translation.] United States of Venezuela, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Department of Exterior, No. 463, Caracas, March 28, 1896. Most Excellent Sir: The reply, dated November 26th last, transmitted to Your ^Excellency through the British Ambassador at Washington by the Chief Secretary of State of Her Britannic Majesty's ¦Government, has elicited special interest in this office ; the more particularly since it is known to have been occasioned by the very able and lucid exposition which Your Excellency had previously brought to the attention of the Court of St. James touching the question pending between Venezuela and the British Colony of Demerara. The Government of the Republic, naturally desirous of not leaving uncorrected some ¦of the statements and ideas therein put forth by the repre sentative of Her Majesty's Government relative to the ques tion named, has thought it not inexpedient to cause to be pre pared by this Ministry a Memorandum on the subject, which, together with a copy of this note, will be handed to Your Excellency by Senor Jos6 Andrade, the Venezuelan Minis ter at Washington. I beg, therefore, that Your Excellency may be pleased to give this Memorandum your careful attention. The facts and arguments therein are believed to constitute a complete refutation of the adverse opinions and positions put forth and assumed by the British Secretary of State ; copies of whose -note, together with copies of the very important special mes sage (of December 17th) of His Excellency President Cleve land, and other accompanying documents, Your Excellency was so good as to transmit hither, through the Venezuelan? Legation, on the 26th of December last. I have the honor to again express to Your Excellency the- assurances of my highest consideration and esteem. (Signed) P. Ezequiel Rojas. To His Excellency Richard Olney, Secretary of State of the United States,. Washington, D. C. [Translation.] MEMORANDUM. As could not fail to be the case, the message sent by Presi dent Cleveland to the Congress of the United States of Amer ica on December 17, 1895, relating to the territorial dispute , spending between the United States of Venezuela and Great Britain, as well as the printed correspondence sent as an ap pendix to said document, has been read with deep interest. It is considered opportune to offer here some observations with respect to the note of Lord Salisbury therein published, .and which, under t date of November 26th last, treats exclu sively of the boundary question as a means of contributing to its elucidation. «i|t Ji -U ik. ali Of 9|E 7^ Tfl¥ 7^ *F *P Although the boundary dispute commenced in 1840, as re gards Venezuela, ever since 1822 her predecessor, Colombia, had given her Agent in London, Senor Jose" Rafael Revenga, instructions to present a project of a treaty containing articles relating to boundaries, observing to him that the Colonists of Demerara and Berbice had usurped a great part of the lands belonging to the Republic, and that it was indispensable that they place themselves under the protection of her laws or else ^withdraw. In an article in the London Times of October 17th last, which appears to have been a reflection of the ideas of the .Foreign Office, it is asserted that it is exactly a hundred years .since the question of determining the true area possessed by Holland began. The dispute between it and Spain had existed for a much longer time, as is proved, among other facts, by the assault in 1797 on one of the forts which the Dutch had constructed under the name of New Zealand and Middleberg, near the Pumaron. Lord Salisbury himself mentioned that in 1759* and in 1 769 there were complaints and claims by Holland for the incursions of the Spaniards into the settlements and estab lishment on the lower Cuyuni, and the advisability was ex pressed of a proper demarcation between the Colony of the Essequibo and the Orinoco river. In 1 781 the English, having only military occupation of the Dutch Colonies, could illy have laid out their boundaries on the upper Orinoco further than Punta. Barima. If Spain took part in the negotiations which led to the treaty of cession to Great Britain of the Dutch Colonies in 1814, andl did not object to the boundaries claimed by her, although fully acquainted therewith, that fact does not appear in any article of the said Convention, to which the only parties were her Britannic Majesty and the United Provinces of the Netherlands- Article 1, principal, and the additional article 1, relating to the cession, speak only of the establishments of Demerara, Esse quibo, and Berbice, without in any way establishing their boundaries. It is known that England has gone on advancing: them progressively. When Venezuela proclaimed as her boundaries those of the territory which had constituted the Captaincy-General of the same name, she did no more than to declare herself inheritor of the rights of Spain therein, without pretending to destroy international arrangements previously concluded by the nation from which she separated herself, as has been charged. There is no arrangement through which Spain established the divid ing line between her possessions and those of the Dutch in Guayana. Did one, exist there would be no ground for this dispute. The argument of Lord Salisbury in this regard is a petitia principii. He asserts that there is no authoritative statement by the Spanish Government in which the territories of the Captaincy- General of Venezuela are determined; for a decree which the Government of this Republic sets up, and which was issued by the King of Spain in 1768, in which the Province of Guayana. is described as bounded on the south by the Amazon and on the east by the Atlantic, cannot be so regarded. He adds that the decree utterly ignores the Dutch establishments, which not only existed de facto, but had been formally recognized by the Treaty of Munster ; that it would, if now considered valid, transfer to Venezuela the British, Dutch, and French Guay- anas, and an enormous tract of territory belonging to Brazils The Royal Rescript of 1768 has nothing absurd in it. This will be seen by any one who reads the instruction, issued on March 9, 1779, by the Intendant General of Venezuela to settle and occupy lands in the province of Guayana, which says: "The Dutch Colony of Essequibo, and the other colo nies of the States-General on that coast were usually situated on the banks of the river near the seacoast without penetrating much into the interior of the country, and that therefore to the rear of the Essequibo and the other Dutch possessions, run ning towards the east as far as French Guayana, and on the south to the Amazon river, was the territory unoccupied by them, and only occupied by the heathen Indians and a large pop ulation of fugitive negroes, slaves of the Dutch ; that the Commissioners should endeavor to occupy the said lands as belonging to Spain, their first discoverer, and not thereafter ceded to nor at any time occupied by, any other power having title thereto ; advancing in the operation as far as possible to the extent of reaching French Guayana; and extending also as far to the south as possible until the boundaries of the Crown of Portugal should be reached ; that the occupation of the lands of all the said Colonies should be made as though they were a part of the said Province of Guayana, and in the name of the Governor and Commandant thereof, as its head and chief, by command and appointment of H. M." Therefore, it is clear that, saving the points of the seacoast where the Dutch, the French, and the Portuguese were estab lished, Spanish Guayana was bounded on the south by the Amazon, and on the east, not only by the Atlantic, but (from the Essequibo) by the Dutch, French, and Portuguese Colonies. It is true that by the boundary treaty of 1750 between Spain and Portugal, the former had ceded the portion which she had on the Amazon from the mouth of the Rio Negro; but as, in 1761, the parties agreed to rescind the said compact and to place things in status quo ante, Spain could, in 1768, declare herself riparian owner of the Amazon. In 1777 the said parties revived the boundary treaty, and then Spain again relinquished her rights to a part of the great river of which she only retained the portion comprised from the mouth of the Jabari up to the westermost point of the Yapura, which empties into the Amazon on its northern bank. Although Commissioners were sent for the purpose of effecting the demarcation, in 1780 it had not been done; nor was it ever concluded, because of the obstacles which the Por tuguese obstinately interposed, as may be seen in the "Histor ical Memorial of the Demarcation of Boundaries of the Dominions of Spain and of Portugal in America, presented in 1797 by Don Vicente Aguilar y Turado, Clerk of the Second Class of the Department of State, and Don Francisco Requena, Brigadier Engineer of the Royal Spanish Armies." From such a Royal Rescript it cannot be inferred, then, that British Guayana, part of the former Dutch Guayana and recognized by Spain, together with that bearing the same name to-day as belonging to the Netherlands, or that French Guayana, tolerated or virtually recognized by Spain in the compacts of alliances, of guarantee, and of family as a posses? sion of France, or that Brazilian Guayana, recognized by Spain as the property of Portugal in the treaty of October 1 of, i777> belonged to Spain. So much value is attributed by Spain to that Royal Rescript of 1768, that upon it, above everything else, did its Govern ment (selected as arbitrator in the boundary dispute between Venezuela and Colombia) found its declaration that the latter was joint owner of the Orinoco from the entry therein of the Meta river to the Guaviare river, in the award made on the 16th of March of 1891, and adjudicating thereto several towns founded and possessed by Venezuela. It may be added that even (according to the Annals of Guayana, published in 1888 by the Englishmen, Messrs. James Rodway and Thomas Watt) King James, learning that the King of Spain had actual , possession of Guayana in 1620, revoked the patent that he had granted in 16 17 to Captain Roger North to form the Amazon Company, and ordered the immediate return of himself and his companions in adventure, who found themselves called upon to appear before the said Xing James and renounce all the rights to them granted by the patent. These compilers add that the Portuguese, when subjects of Spain, succeeded in establishing themselves at the mouth of the Amazon ; and it is further recorded that the Spaniards were the discoverers and first occupants thereof. That prior to 1750 the Amazon belonged to Spain, appears from the Preamble of the boundary treaty concluded between her and Portugal on the 13th of January of that year, which, in specifying the grounds therefor, says (Paragraph 2): " As the Crown of Portugal is occupying the two banks of the Maranon (or Amazon) river up-stream as far as the mouth of the Tabari river, which enters it on the southern bank, it clearly results that it has introduced itself in the demarcations of .Spain for the whole distance, from the said city [of Para] to the mouth of that river, the same being the case in the interior of Brazil by the inland advances that this Crown has made as far as Cuyaba .or Matogroso" Cayenne, near the Amazon, afterward a French possession, was first colonized by the Spaniards. "1568. Gaspar de Sotelle, with 126 families from Spain, formed an establishment in Cayenne, , whence he was driven •out five years later by the Caribs." (Sloane, M.S., Description of Guayana.) Passage taken from. the. said "Annals of Guayana." " But of the territories claimed and actually occupied by the x Dutch, which were those acquired from them by Great Brit ain," says Lord Salisbury, "there exist the most authentic declarations. In 1759, and again in 1769, the States-General of Holland addressed formal remonstrances to the -Court of 10 Madrid against the incursions of the Spaniards into their posts and settlements in the Basin of the Cuyuni. In these remon strances they distinctly claimed all the branches of the Esse quibo river, and especially the Cuyuni river as lying within Dutch territory. They demanded immediate reparation for the proceedings of the Spaniards and reinstatement of the posts said to have been injured by them, and suggested that a proper delineation between the Colony of Essequibo and the Rio Orinoco should be laid down by authority. "To this claim the Spanish Government never attempted to make any reply. But it is evident from the archives which are preserved in Spain, and to which, by the courtesy of the Spanish government, reference has been made, that the Coun cil of State did not consider that they had the means of re butting it, and that neither they nor the Governor of Cumana were prepared seriously to maintain the claims which were suggested in reports from his subordinate officer, the Com mandant of Guayana. These reports were characterized by the Spanish Ministers as insufficient and unsatisfactory, as ' professing to show the Province of Guyana under too favor able a light,' and finally by the Council of State as appear ing from other information to be very 'improbable.' They form, however, with a map which accompanied them, the evidence on which the Venezuelan Government appear most to rely. " . The Republic is not acquainted with all the documents here alluded to. It does know that, in 1769, the Dutch as serted the right they believed they had to fish at the en trance of the Orinoco, and that they complained of the actions of the Spaniards who were established there. Then all the data was collected with relation to the extension of the boun daries of the Dutch; which, however, was adverse to their pre tensions, and the matter was laid before the Council. But the Dutch Government allowed more than fifteen years to pass without making any move in the premises; wherefore it was- felt that, being better informed of the want of just grounds for theiLclaim, they had desisted therefrom. Then came the 11 Treaty of 1791, which decided the question, describing the- Spanish as owners of the establishments of the Orinpco, and1 the Dutch as owners of those of the Essequibo. Several agents of Venezuela have inspected the old archives- of Spain without discovering therein aught, save proofs hr every way contrary to those now, for the first time, cited in the communication of Lord Salisbury. For instance, it appears therefrom, that in 1757 the Com mandant of Guayana sent against Cuyuni a detachment by which was destroyed a "post" which the Dutch had estab lished some fifteen leagues from the mouth of this river,. taking as prisoners the Dutch, the Indians, and the slaves found there; that in 1758 there was also destroyed the hut that the Dutch had on the island of Caramucuro, on the same river only a short distance from the Essequibo, taking its occupants,. etc., prisoners. Lord Salisbury also asserts that: " The fundamental principle underlying the Venezuelan ar gument is, in fact, that inasmuch as Spain was originally entitled* of right to the whole of the American continent, any territory' on that continent which she cannot be shown to have acknowl edged on positive and specific terms to have passed to another power can only have been acquired by wrongful usurpation,. and if situated to the north of the Amazon and west of the Atlantic must necessarily belong to Venezuela, as her self -con stituted inheritor in those regions." Venezuela inherited the rights which Spain had in the Cap taincy-General of that name, in accordance with the cession contained in the treaty of peace, amity and' recognition, con cluded at Madrid on March 30, 1845; and in the second article- of which it appears, that "H. C. M. recognizes the Republic of Venezuela as a free, sovereign, and independent nation, com posed of the Provinces and territories set forth in its Constitu tion and other subsequent laws, to wit: Margarita, Guayana*. Cumana, Barcelona, Caracas, Carabobo, Barquisimeto, Bari- nas, Apure, Merida, Trujillo, Coro, Maracaibo, and other terri tory or islands whatsoever that may belong to it." 12 Had not the territory occupied by the Dutch in Guayana constituted a part of the dominions of Spain, the mere fact •of its occupation would have sufficed to confer upon them the right of property, without need of the Treaty of Munster in 1648 to perfect their title, stipulating, in Article III., that "The King of Spain and the States respectively shall remain in the possession and enjoyment of those seigniories, cities, .castles, forts, commerce, and countries of the East and West Indies, as well as in Brazil and the coast of Asia, Africa, and America, respectively, which the said King and States had and .possessed." Without this treaty, it was then believed, the Dutch occu- ¦pation would not have had the effect of conferring the title which is exclusively attributed to it. If, then, what the Dutch occupied in the Essequibo was not -considered as legitimately theirs until after, by the Treaty of peace of 1648, Spain ceded it to them, it is clear that prior to this the said territory belonged to Spain. And the same is ¦equally true of territory which was not included in the cession, .and which was adjacent to the part alienated. Towards the -part not transferred, the Dutch could neither trade nor navi- .gate because they were expressly prohibited therefrom by Article VI. of the said Treaty of Munster. In like manner, Article VIII. of the Spanish-British Treaty of July 18, 1670, prohibited the English from carrying their ¦commerce and navigation to the posts or localities which the Catholic King had in the West Indies. Moreover, Great Britain, by the Treaty of July 13, 1713, .concluded at Utrecht, had guaranteed to Spain the preserva tion of the limits of her dominions in America "as they ex isted in the time of Charles II." By the Boundary Treaty that Spain and Portugal concluded on the 13th of January, 1750, Portugal obligated herself to mphold Spain in her, original right to the territory which lay on the coast between the Amazon and the banks of the Orinoco ; and in the interior of America the guarantee was 13 indefinite. The same guarantee was stipulated by botb powers in the treaty of March n, 1778. The persistent efforts of Spain to drive the Dutch away from the Orinoco, the Moroco, the Pumaron, the Cuyuni, etc., constitute as many more evidences of her intent to retain the possession of those localities, and to exclude the intruders there from. Title founded on discovery has been held generally as valid ;; and in their controversy with Great Britain regarding the Northwestern boundary, the United States invoked the same with respect to the mouth of the Columbia river arid its sources. They also alleged the acquisition by them of all the titles of Spain, which had derived the same through having discovered the coasts of the region in dispute prior to their having been- seen by any other people from a civilized nation. Another ground upon which the, United States based their contention was that of contiguity, arguing that if some few English trading-posts on the shores of Hudson Bay were con sidered by great Britain as conferring on it a right of property up to the Rocky Mountains ; if its new and more southern establishments on the Atlantic coast justified the claim from there to the southern seas, which in effect was sustained to the Mississippi ; then the rights of American citizens, already touching the said seas, could not be denied without incon sistency. And, they added that the doctrine was accepted in all its amplitude by Great Britain, as appears from all the privileges it gave to colonies then established only on the shores of the Atlantic, and which extended from that ocean to- the Pacific. Even leaving aside the Bulls of the Popes, who, according- to the contemporary jurisprudence, distributed the lands to be discovered between the Spanish and Portuguese, if the prac tices of peoples who acted independently of the Holy See is examined, it will be found that, " notwithstanding some declarations merely theoretical, occupation is effected in a fictitious manner. Any manifestations, such as the erection of a monument, of a cross, the unfolding of a flag, suffices- 14 'to realize the occupation of the vast territories which provoke ¦a thousand difficulties with the competitors as regards the exact limits of the territories belonging to each. Moreover, the religious prejudices from which Francisco Victoria could not free himself in his Essay de Indis (1557), make it ap pear that "the heathens are without any right of sovereignty, or even of property which should be respected, and the covetous interest of colonizing countries still retains this view, when fanati cism no longer explains it." " We must come down to contemporaneous times to find the condition of taking of actual possession of the territory prac tically demanded, in accordance with rational and juridical ideas of occupation, as it had been understood by the publicists of the-XVIIIth century, notably Vattel." " It is known that this new rule was formally accepted by the powers signing the last Protocol of Berlin, on February .26, 1885, Article 35, as regards future occupations of the coast of the African continent ; and that the effective character of the taking of possessions, according to the same article, is shown by the fact of establishing or of maintaining, should it already ¦exist, an authority sufficient to cause the required rights to be respected, and, should the case arise, the liberty of commerce and of transit." [General Review of Public International Law, Paris, Nov. 2, 1894. Article on the occupation of Territories and the Process of "Hinterland," a German word which means .the back territory, .] The writer, Mr. F. Despagnet, professor of International Law in the University of Bordeaux, explains that the essence of the process consists in establishing, through an interna tional agreement, a topographical line on this side of which each country has the right of occupation, or to establish a protectorate to the exclusion of the other contracting State; that is its Hinterland, or territory this side of the conventional line. On the other hand, each country binds itself to make •no attempt at acquisition of territory or of a protectorate, and to not assail the influence of the other State beyond the line established. In practice, the Hinterland is the prolongation 15 towards the interior of the territory first occupied on the coasts up to the limits of the possessions of the other con tracting State, or of its Hinterland, recognized in the treaty. The author adds that as the German Foreign Office said on the 30th of December, 1886, " the purpose is not so much to establish the frontiers in accordance with the present pos session, as it is to come to an understanding to determine the sphere of reciprocal interests in the future " ; that much simi larity exists between the present system of the Hinterland and the a priori limitations of the spheres of influence established in the XVth and XVIth centuries between colonizing coun tries by the Holy See ; that the famous Bull of Alexander VI., of March 4, 1493, is nothing more than the limitation of a vast Hinterland divided among the Spanish and the Portu guese, and when these two countries, little satisfied with the Papal decision, modified the frontiers marked by the Sov ereign Pontiff in the Treaty of Tordesillas, June 3, 1494, they concluded a convention which does not differ from the modern treaties regulating the Hinterland, save in the scope of its ap plication and the spirit of submission to the Pope, to which it was subordinated, since Julius II. had to approve it in 1509: " that the same Hinterland system appears in various recent treaties made between France and England in 1847, relative to the Hebrides Islands, and those of the windward of Tahiti ; that, with respect to Africa, in those concluded between Eng land and Germany, in eastern Africa and in Zanzibar, in 1886 and 1890; between Germany and Portugal, also relating to eastern Africa in 1886; between France and England in 1889 respecting the western coast of Africa, and in 1890 with re gard to the eastern coast of Zanzibar and Central Africa; be tween France and the Congo along the basin of the Oubangi, in 1887 and 1888 ; between England and Italy, touching eastern Africa, in March and April of 1891; between the Congo and Portugal regarding Guinea and the Congo, in 1886; and, lastly, between England and Portugal relative to the center of southern Africa, in August and November of 1890." 16 In the historical memorial regarding boundaries between the Republic of Colombia and the Empire of Brazil, by the national Librarian of the former, Sefior Jose Maria Quijano Otero, there appears, in part ist, paragraph 2 (speaking of the Bull of Pope Alexander VI., identical with that of his predecessors respecting Portugal) : "All the Christian Princes recognized the validity of these Bulls, and there is even cited the case where some English merchants desiring to carry on trade with Guinea, the King of Portugal, Don Juan II., called on the King of England, Ed ward IV., to prevent the same, relying on the dominion which was granted him by a Pontifical Bull over the same territory;, and the prohibition was effected, the British monarch being convinced of the right of the claimant." In proof of this, he cites Hackluyfs Navigations, Voyages and Travels of the Eng lish, vol. 2, paragraph 2, p. 2. Add to this, as appears in Wharton's Digest, Appendix, sec. 2, that " when any European nation takes possession of any extensive seacoast, that possession is understood as ex tending into the interior country to the source of the rivers- emptying within that coast, to all their branches and the country they cover; and to give it a right in exclusion of all other nations to the same." " Whenever one European nation makes a discovery and takes possession of any portion of that continent, and another afterwards does the same at some distance from it, where the boundary between them is not determined by the principle above mentioned, the middle distance becomes such, of course." "Whenever any European nation has thus ac quired a right to any portion of territory on that continent, that right can never be diminished or affected by any third Power by virtue of purchases made, by grants, or conquests of the natives within the limits thereof." " The two rules generally, perhaps universally, recognized and consecrated by the usage of nations have followed from the nature of the subject. By virtue of the first, prior dis covery gave a right to occupy, provided that occupancy took. 17 >lace within a reasonable time and was ultimately followed by jermanent settlement and by the cultivation of the soil. In con formity with the second, the right derived from prior discovery and 'ettlement was not confined to the spot so discovered or first settled. The extent of territory which would attach to such first discovery or settlement, might not in every case be precisely determined. But that the first discovery and subsequent settlement, within a reasonable time, of the mouth of a river, particularly if none of its branches had been explored prior to such discovery, gave the right of pccu- bancy, and ultimately of sovereignty, to the whole country drained by such river and its several branches, has been generally admitted. And in a question between the United States, and Great Britain her acts have with propriety been appealed to as showing that the prin ciples on which they rely accord with their own ." The foregoing statements and citations have been made to demonstrate that the argument upon which Venezuela relies is not as groundless as Lord Salisbury asserts, and that Spain, as the first discoverer of the coasts of Guayana, could well be considered as owner of the territories thereof, for otherwise the Dutch would not need her recognition of them to make valid their acquisitions in the said territory. Finally, as Story says in his Commentaries on the Consti tution of the United States : " The discovery was the British title to the territory composing them. That right was held among the European nations a just and sufficient foundation on which to rest their respective claims to the American con tinent. Whatever controversies existed among them (and they were numerous) respecting the extent of their own acquisitions abroad, they appealed to this as the ultimate fact, by which their various and conflicting claims were to be ad justed. It may not be easy upon general reasoning to estab lish the doctrine that priority of discovery confers any exclu sive right to territory. It was probably adopted by the European nations as a convenient and flexible rule by which :o regulate their respective claims. For it was obvious that n the mutual contests for dominion in newly discovered lands, 2y 18 there would soon arise violent and sanguinary struggles for exclusive possession unless some common principle should be recognized by all maritime nations for the benefit of all. None more readily suggested itself than the one now under consid eration; and as it was a principle of peace and repose, of perfect equality, of benefit in proportion to the actual or sup posed expenditures and hazards attendant upon such enter prises, it received a universal acquiescence, if not a ready approbation. It became the basis of European polity and regulated the exercise of the rights of sovereignty and settle ment of all the cisatlantic plantations ." It is also stated there that no one of the European powers gave its assent to this principle more unequivocally than England; that when she commissioned any one to acquire territory she limited the authority to countries "then unknown to Christian people;" that a great part of the territory of the United States, when transferred to them by the treaty of peace and recognition of 1782, was in the possession of Indians, as was a great part of Florida when Spain ceded it to the British in 1763, as was Louisiana almost entirely when Napoleon sold it in 1803, there being there numerous tribes of Indians really inde pendent, etc. It is seen in the communication of Lord Salisbury that upon the return of an exploration to the interior of British Guayana made by Mr. R. Schomburgk, he suggested to the English Government the necessity of a prompt demarca tion of its. limits; and that he was then named special commis sioner to draw the plan thereof and to temporarily establish the same, notice of which was given to the interested Govern ments, including that of Venezuela. It is not strange that this Commissioner, therefore, should endeavor to please the Government that had acceded to his ' suggestions by presenting it a line in accord with its de sires. It is true that the British Consul-General gave this Gov ernment notice of the charge entrusted to Mr. Schomburgk, but that was on the 13th of January of 1841, when he might 19 Ifaave already Ibeen in Guayana making the survey and demar cation. Not only was it not stated that .the' demarcation would be temporary, or that Venezuela was invited to take part •on the operation, but the notification was coupled with the threat that there had been sent to the Governor of Demerara .an Order to resist the aggressions of the Republic in the terri tory near the frontier, up to that time inhabited by independent tribes, which signified at least that H. B. M. appropriated them to herself and defended them. In vain did this Government urge the concluding of the ^boundary treaty. That Schomburgk did not discover or invent any new "boundaries, but relied on the history of the matter, and based his reports on his own explorations and on information obtained Jrom the Indians and on the evidence of local remains, as at Barima, and local traditions as on the Cuyuni, and fixed the limits of the Dutch possessions and the zone from which all trace of Spanish influence was absent., That at the very out set of his mission he surveyed Point Barima, where the -remains of a Dutch, fort still existed, and placed there, and at ¦the mouth of the Amacura two boundary posts, afterwards removed, at the urgent entreaty of the Government of Vene zuela, but without prejudice to its (the British) rights to that position. This is what Lord Salisbury says. Previously he asserted that from 1796, and at the time of a previous occupation of the Dutch settlements in 1781, the British authorities had marked the western limit of their pos sessions as beginning some distance up the Orinoco beyond Point Barima, in accordance with the limits claimed and ac tually held by the Dutch, and that from that time on this has .always been the frontier claimed by Great Britain. In the first place, it is not conceivable how the English, mere military occupants prior to 18 14, could have made the de marcation of a territory which did not yet belong to them. In the second place, if the boundaries were already designated, •what need was there to resort to the traditions of ignorant, .barbarous men like the Indians ? What did they know of the 20 Dutch or Spanish occupations? There might be no Spanish set tlements, but this does not mean to say that they had not founded any. There was an absence of Dutch settlements also. It is not asserted that any such were found, but only remains of those that had disappeared. Such being the case, the reason. for the preference in favor of the Dutch is not announced. In a previous passage Lord Salisbury wrote that the Dutch' claimed immediate reparation for the proceedings of the Span iards and the reinstatement of the "posts" destroyed by them in 1759, anc^ again in T7^9^ by reason of the incursions of the Spaniards into the "posts" and settlements in the basin of the Cuyuni. Therefore it is undeniable that the Spaniards did penetrate to that river and did destroy the works of the Dutch,,. considering them as intruders, and that the influence of the Spaniards made itself felt on the Cuyuni, as well as on the other affluents of the Essequibo. Lord Salisbury also states that the States-General had sug gested to the court of Madrid the feasibility of an authorized. demarcation between the Colony of Essequibo and the Orinoco- river. It is readily noticed that if this was demanded by the Dutch, their successors, the British, have carried their pre tensions much further, as they have appropriated to themselves several tributaries of the Orinoco, among them the Barima,. and the Amacuro. There was no Dutch fort in Barima. According to the his torian cited, Netscher, such a supposition is erroneous, and grew out of the fact that in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, the Commandants of the Netherlands Colonies in Guayana estab lished small "posts" in the most distant part of the territory to trade with the natives or Indians, and that in some maps, without reason and exaggeratedly, they are called "forts." "They were made up," he says, "of a guard — two or three subaltern Europeans and some twenty soldiers as assistants,.. besides a few Indian or negro slaves. The frame house or guard house was almost always surrounded by an earth-wall or a palisade, as a precaution against the occasional attacks- 21 of the Indian enemy, and the holder of the post raised the flag of the West India Company." " That in the middle of the XVIIth century there existed at the mouth of the Barima a post of that kind detached from the Essequibo, appears to be true. Hartzingck, at least, makes mention of it, and we follow his example on page 92 (last line), but after more accurate investigations in the archives of the Kingdom, we have become convinced that that post no longer existed from 1683 to 1684, and therefore it must have been either destroyed by the enemy or abolished." Netscher concludes by observing that in the very exact cor respondence of the Commandants of the Essequibo and of the Pumaron, no mention is made of the said post at Barima, but there is mention of others ; and that this is not to be wondered at, for already in 1685, the West India Company had decided mot to carry on any more trade by the Orinoco. It results therefrom : 1st, that the "posts" were not military, but mercantile; 2nd, that that of Barima, if indeed there was .any in the middle of the XVIIth century, was detroyed or .abandoned. Although the Dutch subsequently endeavored to return to Barima, the Commandant-General (Centurion) ejected them ttherefrom forever in 1768. Schomburgk, on submitting his maps for adoption, as Lord Salisbury states, called the attention of the Government of Her Majesty to the circumstance that it might claim the whole basin of the Cuyuni and Yuruari on the grounds that the natural boundary of the Colony included any territory through vantages which might result from a final settlement of the boundary between the territory of British Guayana and that of Venezuela, and you will point out that the Venezuelan* Government in returning no answer to the proposals made > by Her Majesty's Government in 1844 is responsible for any in convenience which has resulted from the question being still undetermined." There is brought to mind the declaration made in 1850 by 'ZtS Great Britain that she did not propose, as had been reported, to seize Venezuelan Guayana, and that she would not view with indifference aggressions upon the disputed territory by the Republic, which territory both parties agreed not to occupy or usurp , at the suggestion of the Charge d'Aff aires, Belford Hinton Wilson. And then, to the frequent invocation of the same by Venezuela, it is objected that the Venezuelans re peatedly violated it in subsequent years. These alleged violations were: ist, the occupation of new positions to the east of their previous establishments, and the founding in 1855 of Nueva Providencia on the right bank of the Yuruary, all previous settlements being on the left bank; 2d, the granting of licenses in 1876 to trade and cut wood in Barima and eastward; 3d, the concession to General Pulgar, in 1881, which included a large portion of the territory in dispute ; and 4th, two different grants made by Venezuela in 1883, which covered the whole of the territory in dispute and which were followed by actual attempts to settle there, by reasons of which the British Government could not remain longer inactive, and a British Magistrate was sent into the threatened district to assert the British rights, warning of which was given to the Venezuelan Government and to the concessionaires. In this way it is endeavored to justify the violation of the Agreement of 1850 by the English Government, since it has occupied many places comprised within the disputed territory. To appreciate that conduct it is very pertinent to state that the Agreement of 1 850, proposed by Mr. Wilson for the ac ceptance of Venezuela, did not determine, as it should have done to prevent controversies, the territory in dispute by designating it with precision. Nor is there any place men tioned therein, except incidentally in a passage where the Charg^ d' Affaires says he had transmitted to his Government letters from Ciudad Bolivar, in which he was informed "that orders had been communicated to the authorities of the Province of Guayana to place it in a state of defense, and to repair and arm the dismantled and abandoned forts; that the -Governor, Josg Tomas Machado, had spoken of constructing 29 a fort at Port Barima, the right of possession to which is in dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela" Point Barima is exactly the place where Sir Robert Ker Porter, Chargg d' Affaires of Great Britain, urgently asked the Government of Venezuela, in an official note of May 26,. 1836, to locate a signal or lighthouse which should be suffi ciently conspicuous. Sir Robert also spoke'of the inefficiency of the pilotage of the Orinoco, recalling that a Venezuelan schooner had been detailed to go out daily from Point Barima and to cruise in aid of the vessels that might seek the entrance of the river; and he observed that the failure of the due- arrangement, followed by its abandonment, caused that wise and well known plan of the Department of Marine to be frustrated!. Then Venezuela did exercise jurisdiction over Point Barimar. and could therefore order that its vessels should depart there from, and locate at the proper point the lighthouse whose erection had been recommended, and grant permission to trade therewith and to cut wood. In the Annals of Guayana already cited, volume P, part- first, page 8, we find this : " 1530. In this year the Spaniards wh© had succeeded in establishing themselves on Terra Firma made their initial at tempt to settle in the country contiguous to Guayana." One Pedro de Acosta, with two small caravels and three hundred men, reached Barima probably from Cumana on Terra Firma.- Neverfeheless the party was repulsed from Barima in the same year by the Caribs, or it should be said rather, the remains of ' the expedition, because the cannibals had killed and ate many, and the few who succeeded in escaping with their lives were compelled to abandon all their goods and the houses they had erected." Thus it is proven that the Spaniards were the first to dis cover and occupy Barima, and to set up and construct houses there; forcible ejection therefrom by the native Indians not destroying the right acquired, as the English alleged in the analogous case of their expulsion from the island/ of Santa^ Lucia. 30 In the concessions mentioned, and especially in the Manoa concession, it was stipulated in a conclusive manner that it ran to where British Guayana began, without designating the boundary with greater precision, as the demarcation had not,, been made. Even though there may have been such violations of the Agreement of 1850, the appropriation by Great Britain of the territory in dispute cannot be justified thereby. Lord Salisbury asserts that the Government of Venezuela never replied to the proposition of Lord Granville regarding boundaries. Under date of October 15, 1883, the British Minister at Caracas, Colonel Mansfield, addressed to the Minister of For eign Relations a note in which he solicited the simultaneous adjustment of the three questions then pending between the two countries, to wit: 1st, the question of limits between .Venezuela and British Guayana; 2d, that of differential duties upon importations from British Colonies; and 3d, that of claims of British creditors of the Republic. " As preliminary to the taking up of the negotiations," said Mr. Mansfield, "Lord Granville considers it indispensable that a reply be made to the, proposals of Her Majesty's Government in the matter of boundaries. If the reply should be in the affirmative, and if the other questions should ' be satisfactorily adjusted, the de sires of the Government of Venezuela with respect to the island of Patos will obtain favorable consideration." On the 15 of November following, the Government of Venezuela replied in these terms : " The citizen President has for many years been consulting the opinion of jurisconsults and public men of great eminence, seeking light which should lead him to the solution of the Guayana boundary question in the form of a treaty; but, as all the documents and all the talent consulted have in each instance more strongly confirmed that the boundary, of right inherited by the Republic, between the former Dutch Colony, now the British Colony, is the Essequibo river, the impossi bility of resorting to any other method of terminating that 31 discussiion save the decision of an arbitrator who, by the voluntary and unanimous election of both Governments, shall hear and finally determine it, has been evident. "This is the obstacle which His Excellency the President encounters in satisfying, as he would like to do, the desire of Lord Granville to determine all cause for discussion be tween the two Governments through a treaty." These words evidently involve the rejection of the proposal of Lord Granville, as it substitutes therefor the proposition to submit the whole matter to the decision of an arbitrator. After having considered the latter proposition, Lord Gran ville, through Mr. Mansfield, and under date of March 29, 1884, replied thereto : " That the government of Her Majesty was not of the opinion that the boundary between this Republic and Great Britain should be submitted to arbi tration, but at the same time they expressed the hope that some other method of bringing this matter to a satisfactory conclusion for both powers would be evolved." In the first months after his arrival at London, the Minister. of Venezuela, Gen. Guzman Blanco, insisted that as the funda mental law of the Republic prohibited all alienation of terri tory, the boundary controversy could not be decided except through arbitration, and he proposed in place of arbitration by a friendly power the judgment of a judicial tribunal, to be made up of persons designated by the parties respectively. On February 13, 1885, Lord Granville replied in the nega tive, as appears from these words : " I regret to inform you, Mr. Minister, that the said proposition presents constitutional difficulties which prevent the government of Her Majesty frorri acceding thereto, and it is not disposed to withdraw from the method proposed by the Government of Venezuela^ and accepted by the Government of Her Majesty to decide the question by adopting a conventional boundary established by mutual accord between the two Governments." Lord Salisbury says : "Mr. Olney is mistaken in suppos ing that in 1885 ' a treaty was practically agreed upon con taining a general arbitration clause, under which the parties 32 might haVe submitted the boundary dispute to the decision of a third power, or of several powers in amity with both.' It is- true that Gen. Guzman Blanco proposed that the Commercial Treaty between the two countries should contain a clause of this nature, but it had reference to future disputes only. Her Majesty's Government have always insisted on a separate dis cussion of the frontier question, and have considered its settle ments to be a necessa^r preliminary to other arrangements." It might have been added that Lord Granville agreed to it. on saying to the Venezuelan Minister, under date of May 15,. 1885, that : " Her Majesty's Government agreed in that the obligation was to refer to arbitration all the disagreements that might arise between the High Contracting parties, and not those only growing out of the interpretation of the treaty." Thus the respective article remained in the following terms r. " If, as it is to be deprecated, there shall arise between the United States of Venezuela and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland any differences which cannot be adjusted through friendly negotiations, the two Contracting Parties- agree to submit the decision of all such differences to the arbi tration of a third power, or of several powers, in amity with both, without resorting to war; and that the result of such arbitration should be binding upon both Governments." The article does not say " future disputes." The fact is that Lord Salisbury, successor to Lord Granville, thought it applicable to the pending boundary controversy. In that. understanding he retracted it on the 27th of July of the said year in these words, which under any other hypothesis, would. not have been opportune : " Her Majesty's Government are unable to. concur in the assent given by their predecessors to the general arbitration article proposed by Venezuela, and they are unable to agree to the inclusion in it of matters other than those arising out of the interpretation or alleged violation of this particular treaty.. To engage to refer to arbitration all disputes and controver sies whatsoever would be without precedent in the treaties made by Great Britain. Questions might arise such as those- 33 involving the title of the British Crown to territory or other rights df sovereignty which the Government of Her Majesty could not bind themselves beforehand to refer to arbitration." To wean him from this opinion, vain it was to recall to Lord Salisbury examples where Great Britain herself had applied arbitration to the settlement of frontier disputes with the United States of America in 1827 and 1871, in the last case on her proposal repeated as many as six times. Mr. Olney, in his note of the 20th of July last to Lord Salisbury, states that Great Britain has arbitrated the extent of her Colonial posses sions, twice with the United States, twice with Portugal, once with Germany, and perhaps in other instances. The Minister of Venezuela, in London, also recalled at that juncture that the proposition for arbitration had been made to Senor Fortique on this same subject, according to his corre spondence ; that Lord Salisbury had declared that he could not fail to carry out the promises made by his predecessors, even though they should be contrary to his ideas ; and that the same had been done with the correspondence addressed to Russia, which was precisely on the subject of boundaries with Afghanistan, although the present Minister deemed it inex pedient. Lord Salisbury writes: "Early in 1884 news arrived of a fourth breach of the agreement of 1850 through two different grants, which cover the whole of the territory in dispute, and as this was followed by actual attempts to settle on the dis puted territory, the British Government could no longer remain inactive." "Warning was, therefore, given to the Venezuelan Govern ment and to the concessionaires, and a British Magistrate was sent into the threatened district to assert the British righjts." "Meanwhile, the negotiations for a settlement of the boundary had continued, but the only replies that could be obtained from Senor Guzman Blanco, the Venezuelan Minister, were propo sals for arbitration in different forms, all of which Her Majesty's Government was compelled to decline as involving a submis- 3v 34 sion to the arbitrator of the claim advanced by Venezuela in 1844 to all territory up to the left bank of the Essequibo." " As the progress of settlement by British subjects made a decision of some kind absolutely necessary, and as the Venezuelan Govern ment refused to come to any reasonable arrangement, Her Majesty's Government decided not to repeat the offer of concessions which had not been reciprocated, but to assert their undoubted right to the terri tory within the Schomburgk line, while still consenting to hold open for further negotiations, and even for arbitration, the unsettled lands between that line and what they consider would be the rightful bound ary, as stated in the note to Senor Rojas of the 10th of January,, 1880." Lord Salisbury first said that the violations of the Agree ment of 1850 had moved the British Government to remain inactive no longer ; to give notice to the Government of Ven ezuela and to the concessionaires of 1884, and to send to the threatened district a Magistrate to assert the British rights. But in the next line his Lordship adds : " The progress of set tlement by British subjects made a decision of some kind absolutely necessary, and as the Venezuelan Government re fused to come to any reasonable arrangement, Her Majesty's Government decided not to repeat the offer of concessions which had not been reciprocated, but to assert their undoubted right to the territory within the Schomburgk line." ' Add to this the following paragraph from the same com munication from Lord Salisbury: , " Senor Rojas 's proposal was referred to the Lieutenant- Governor and Attorney- General of British Guayana, who were then in Eng land, and they presented an elaborate report, showing that in the thirty -five years which had elapsed since Lord Aberdeen proposed concessions, natives and others had settled in the territory under the belief that they would enjoy the benefits of British rule, and that it was impossible to assent to any such concessions as Senor Rojas 's line would involve. They, however, proposed an alternate line which involved considerable reductions of that laid down by Sir Robert Schomburgk." From these citations, it results that from 1844 new settle- 35 jments began to be secretly founded on the territory to which Lord Aberdeen's line referred ; that the agreement of 1850 snot to occupy any part of the , territories in dispute, did not ¦serve as an obstacle to the fresh occupations ; that conse quently the British Government and its authorities violated it, (notwithstanding the emphatic assertions and promises of Mr. Wilson ; and that, Venezuela, trusting, as she did, in the strict compliance with such solemn words, could not even suspect that the act which Lord Salisbury now for the first time con- jfesses was being consummated. Such acts cannot diminish the rights of the Republic, which, ^as has been said, has been protesting against them since they came to its notice. So that even if Venezuela had committed the violations imputed to her, Great Britain, which had begun them, would jnot have the right to complain of her example being followed. Let it be borne in mind that despite the alleged violations, H. B. M. considered the Agreement of 1850 to be in force, as .appears from the official communication addressed on January 31, 1887, by Mr. F. R. Saint-John, Minister Resident of H. B. M. in Caracas, to the Minister of Foreign Relations of Ven ezuela, in which he says : " That the intention to erect this light- Jiouse (at Point Barima) without the consent of the Government of H. M., would be a violation of the reciprocal obligation contracted , ¦by the Governments of Venezuela and England in 1850 to not occupy. Mr usurp the territory in dispute between the two countries ; and that .the Government of H. M. would have the right to oppose resistance do such a proceeding as an aggressive act on the part of Venezuela.'' Although it is here called, and in the text, reciprocal agree ment, Great Britain had been violating it for some time past, -signally from 1884, and she was deaf to the complaints in this regard made on July 28, 1886, by the then Minister in London, •General Guzman Blanco ; for she made no reply either during that year or subsequently. So that the said Agreement is valid as against Venezuela, but not in favor of Venezuela, to judge from the action of her opponent. It was not until 1.893, when. replying 'to the proposal of 36 Sefior Thomas Michelena to revive the Agreement of 1850,. that the English Government, through Lord Rosebery, alleged as a ground for its refusal what Lord Salisbury now repeats- with regard to violations by Venezuela, and which no other Minister had advanced. According to that, then, the Agreement ceased to exist and the Republic is free from the obligation imposed, by it, andi consequently has recovered full authority to occupy what it. understands to belong to it. But there is more. When two States have subscribed a. Convention, if one of them commits a breach thereof the- injured party can demand its observance through every means,. including the last and most formidable — war ; or in case it does not desire to go so far, it may limit itself to the declara tion that, on its part, it does not consider it as binding. Let Vattel, an old and ever-respected master of the science,. Book 2, Chapter 13, section 200, state it : " Treaties contain promises that are perfect and reciprocal.. If one of the allies fails in his engagements the other may com pel him to fulfill them — a perfect promise confers a right to do so. But, if the latter has no other expedient than that of arms to force his ally to the performance of his promises he: would sometimes find it more eligible to cancel the promises; on his own side also, and to dissolve the treaty. He has un doubted right to do this, since his promises were made only on condition that the ally should, on his part, execute every thing which he had engaged to perform. The party, there fore, who is offended or injured in those particulars which constitute the basis of the treaty, is at liberty to choose the- alternative of either compelling a faithless ally to fulfill his en gagements or of declaring the treaty dissolved by violation of it. On such an occasion, prudence and wise policy will point- out the line of conduct to be pursued." Nevertheless, good faith should always govern the rela tions between States, particularly in the matter of treaties ; it is inadmissible to act in a clandestine manner, but rather with loyalty and frankness on such occasions. To maintain silence 37 and wait until the last hour to justify acts the intention to execute which had not been announced, is not, and cannot be,. .permitted between nations, much less when such acts are at ^variance with the words of their authors. Great Britain has never complained to Venezuela of the alleged violations of the Agreement of 1850 nor asked repara tion therefor, nor given notice that in case of failure to obtain the same she would hold it as null. Nothing of this kind. It thas already been seen that, in January of 1887, Lord Salisbury invoked the Agreement as valid, and still in force, in order to •oppose the erection of a lighthouse at Point Barima without ihis acquiescence, and to assert that to attempt it would be a -violation thereof, which he would have the right to resist as an -aggressive act This, long after the time when the violations .attributed to Venezuela, had been consummated. It was only in 1885 that the British Legation in Caracas made known to -the Government that in certain districts the sovereignty over which ¦was equally in dispute between the Government of H. M. and that